STINSON: Redemption — and satisfaction — at last for Raptors' Kyle Lowry

The celebration at Scotiabank Arena on Tuesday night had a lot of angles to it. It was, most obviously, about a banner unveiled in the rafters. And it was about the presentation of the hilariously blinged-out championship rings, which look to have been designed by a third-world dictator who is compensating for something.

But for the Toronto Raptors, it was more than that. It was the denouement to 24 seasons of mostly embarrassing futility that built toward a period of competence and relevance that, owing to assorted heart-breaking collapses, had the fan base legitimately wondering if it would have been better to just stay crappy.

Lowry, more than anyone else in the building on Tuesday, was the link to those painful memories. A championship is franchise catharsis, a chance to throw off the shroud of failure. Most of those associated with the team’s aches and pains are long gone: DeMar DeRozan to San Antonio, Dwane Casey to Detroit. Jonas Valanciunas, whose anguished, hands-on-head expression when he missed a late chip-in against Cleveland in 2018, was a microcosm of that team’s playoff struggles, shipped to Memphis late last season. Owing to the free-agency events of the summer, Kawhi Leonard and Danny Green were gone, too, by their own choices.

That left Lowry, the beating heart of the Raptors, as the guy to stand in for everything his franchise finally accomplished.

He held the anchor position in the ring ceremony, and when it was his turn to receive the massive bauble from NBA commissioner Adam Silver, the arena filled with roars, which transitioned to shouts of “LOW-RY, LOW-RY.” Catharsis, all right.

It was a cap to an incredible run, not just for his team, but for Lowry himself. Leonard was, of course, a deserving Finals MVP, and no one else played a bigger role in dragging the Raptors over the obstacles that had snagged the team in previous post-seasons on their way to the showdown with Golden State.

Overshadowed, though, by the supernova that was Leonard in full, Lowry authored a remarkable redemption story of his own. He began the season unusually silent, even for him, clearly wounded by the team’s ruthless trade of DeRozan. It was a rebuke of the Casey-DeRozan-Lowry core that had kept running smack into the generational talent of LeBron James, proof that president Masai Ujiri had finally agreed with all those who said that that version of the Raptors would never be good enough to compete for a title.

Even as the new-look team got off to an impressive start, Lowry’s role had been noticeably downgraded. Where he once controlled the Toronto offence, much of the scoring load was shifted to Leonard, who didn’t need a point guard to help him generate shots. Lowry’s production declined, and by the time of the February trade deadline, his emergence in trade rumours was both surprising and yet plausible. Was this how Lowry’s time in Toronto would end, shipped out as the team cut another tie to past playoff woes?

It was, as you have probably heard, not.

Lowry and Ujiri had an airing of grievances, he stayed with the franchise where he had blossomed into an all-star, and the Raptors went about their business. He was beaten up, a 33-year-old body that had a lot of reckless miles on it, and there were times late last season where to go into the post-game locker room was to find Lowry hooked up to some kind of machine that was supposed to stop swelling or promote healing or both. It was enough to make a creaky newspaper columnist feel spry.

Then the playoffs arrived, and the Raptors needed him to score, and he posted a dreadful zero-point performance in the opening loss to Orlando. Seriously, this again? When he hit a free throw early in Game 2 and the home crowd went bonkers, it had to be a little embarrassing. Those were the cheers for a 12th man getting a garbage-time dunk, not a team leader finally breaking a playoff doughnut.

But, as the playoff crucible wore on, the guy that had worn so many playoff failures threw more dirt on the idea that he couldn’t get it done on the biggest stages. His resilience mirrored that of his once-flailing team. When the East final began in Milwaukee, he scored 30 points and almost stole a Game 1 win. In Game 4, with Leonard clearly hobbled and the Raptors needing a victory to knot the series, Lowry bulled his way to 18 first-half points, many of them scored amid a thicket of giant Bucks in the paint.

All of that built toward the game of his life, the 26-point, 10-assist gem in the title-winning Game 6. He had played 74 playoff games with the Raptors, a franchise record. Not one was bigger. Lowry, once and forever, was redeemed. As were the Toronto Raptors.

It was fitting that the highlight reel played before the banner unveiling on Tuesday started its crescendo with Lowry burying bucket after bucket against the Warriors. Then, on the court with a microphone in his hand, he thanked the crowd on an “incredibly special night.” He asked his teammates to join him, and they all pointed to the championship banner, hidden under a black cloth. They counted down, and it fell away.

Serge Ibaka and Fred VanVleet looked to be wiping away tears. Lowry smiled. It was satisfaction that was a long time coming. Seventy-three games, to be precise.

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